Product designs are protected by at least 6 separate legislative regimes in the UK:
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National Design Registration: the appearance of the whole or part of a product resulting from its features and, in particular, lines, contours, colours, shape, texture or materials or ornamentation that are new and have individual character may be registered with the
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Designs Registry of the UK Intellectual Property Office;
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Registered Community Designs: the appearance of the whole or part of a product resulting from its features and, in particular, lines, contours, colours, shape, texture or materials or ornamentation that are new and have individual character may be registered with
OHIM (the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market);
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Unregistered Community Designs: the exclusive right to prevent use as a result of copying subsists automatically throughout the EC in a new design with individual character that is first made available to the public in the EC;
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Unregistered Design Right: an exclusive right not to have articles made to an original design whcih subsists automatically in the UK in the design of aspects of shape or configuration of the whole or part of an article;
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Artistic Copyright: copyright subsists automatically in designs of fabrics, wall coverings and other surface decoration that are contained in original artistic works;
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Semi-conductor Chip Topographies: original designs of patterns or arrangement of patterns of semiconductor material are protected from copying in the UK as a chip topography by a modified national unregistered design right.
It is arguable that there are even more ways of protecting designs. For instance, literary copyright may subsist in a circuit diagram or net list and trade marks may be registered for the shapes of goods or their packaging.
